Social
concern, responsibility, and the notion that provocative issues can
be approached with beauty and sensitivity are the foundations of my
work. I am interested in looking closely at the way in which loaded
issues such as gender, class, mass production and consumption, and consumerism
are interrelated, approached, and discussed. A non-defensive tactic
towards conversation is often the most productive, inviting, and enlightening.
Art offers an alternate access point and therefore, a potentially less
volatile environment in which to examine such topics. It is here that
there is room for humor, metaphor, beauty, and play in the realm of
highly controversial socio-political issues.

In his book, entitled Ways of Seeing, John Berger suggests
that “…when an image is presented as a work of art, the
way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions
about art. Assumptions concerning: beauty, truth, genius, civilization,
form, status, taste, etc.” These assumptions presented by Berger
may or may not be at the forefront of the viewer's conscious mind, but
nonetheless exist in their psyche. I am interested in that which occurs
in people’s minds when they are not necessarily aware that a force
is acting upon them and defenses are left untriggered.

The
fluctuation between the conscious and subconscious is strongly connected
to why photography is my primary medium of choice. The excessive amounts
of photographic imagery we encounter on a day-to-day basis create a
passive effect on the medium. As a result, much of what we absorb exists
in an unconscious sphere. Photography is more detached from itself than
any other medium–to instinctively desensitize of the flooding
of photographic imagery in our society in tandem to its realistic nature,
we do not always immediately recognize what we are seeing or that we
are even seeing at all. Alternatively, with the medium of painting,
for example, one understands and recognizes that they are looking at
“a painting” almost immediately. It is the phenomenon of
physically seeing something, without its presence in the conscious mind.
This detachment from itself is an entrance into the unconscious. It
is my hope that my work flows between the conscious and subconscious,
becoming a reoccurring thought that increases awareness and elicits
conversation, with wit and beauty.